Columbia University capitulates to Trump demands to restore $400m in federal funding – as it happened

This brings us to the end of another day of live coverage of Donald Trump’s second presidency. We will continue to chronicle events in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, here are some of the day’s developments: The Trump administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday. Columbia University agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus. A US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring the administration to reinstate 25,000 workers at 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce. The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reported. At a hearing on whether or not the administration violated a judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador, the judge James Boasberg pledged to “get to the bottom of whether they violated my order”. The representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Bernie Sanders reported on social media that 34,000 people turned out for their just-completed rally in Denver “to take on billionaires and win our country back”. They were preceded by an unusual opening act: Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners fired by Trump. Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer tasked with ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, revealed that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees Trump as “his friend”. According to a memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday. The Department of Homeland Security asked a Cornell University student who sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism” was asked to “surrender” to immigration officials. The US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Bernie Sanders reported on social media that 34,000 people turned out for their just-completed rally in Denver “to take on billionaires and win our country back”. Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Bluesky: “This was the largest political gathering in Denver since Obama in 2008. Also bigger than the 2024 DNC. And the largest ever rally in Bernie’s career (and obviously, mine too).” “It tells me,” Sanders wrote on X, “that the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism. We will fight back. We will win.” The massive rally also heard from Alvaro Bedoya, one of the FTC commissioners who said he had been illegally fired by Donald Trump. Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer with no diplomatic experience or subject-matter expertise whom Donald Trump has tasked with ending the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, revealed to Tucker Carlson that Russian president Vladimir Putin sees Trump as “his friend”. In an interview posted on X, presidential adviser Elon Musk’s social media platform, Witkoff said that in his second meeting with Putin, the Russian president “got personal”. “President Putin had commissioned a beautiful portrait of President Trump, from the leading Russian artist, and actually gave it to me and asked me to take it home to President Trump,” Witkoff said. “It was such a gracious moment, and [he] told me his story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed for the president,” Witkoff continued. “Not because he was the president of the United, he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him, and he was praying for his friend.” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says he will unveil a plan next week to upgrade the aging, under-staffed US air traffic control system next week. In a video message posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, Duffy, a former Fox television host, said that he had just left a meeting with the president in which the he “laid out a plan to upgrade air-traffic control, briefed him on it, he loves it. He said, ‘Listen, go work with Congress, sell them on it, get the money up front”. The question of who will get that money could be acontentious one. Last month, the Washington Post reported that the Federal Aviation Administration was “close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract to overhaul a communications system that serves as the backbone of the nation’s air traffic control system and awarding the work to Elon Musk’s Starlink”. Musk, the president’s top adviser, wrongly said last month that the current system air traffic control facilities and FAA offices use to communicate with one another was operated by a Starlink rival, Verizon. In fact, a contract to upgrade the system was awarded to Verizon in 2023 and the old system, from another company, is still in operation. In an appearance with his former co-hosts on Fox and Friends this week, Duffy revealed that his department is already working with employees from another of Musk’s firms. “We have some SpaceX engineers that are helping us” on the new system, Duffy said. Duffy said earlier this month that he planned to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars for a multi-year effort to revamp air traffic control and boost hiring after a series of aviation safety incidents raised alarm. Voice of America employees, journalists and unions sued the Trump administration in New York on Friday, saying that the shutdown of Congressionally-funded news outlets violated the workers’ First Amendment right to journalistic freedom, Reuters reports. The lawsuit alleges that the US Agency for Global Media, its acting director Victor Morales, and Special Adviser Kari Lake violated several laws when they placed over 1,300 employees on leave and cut funding for several news services last Saturday. The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), The NewsGuild-CWA, the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and seven individual workers. VOA White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara is the lead plaintiff. In an Oval Office encounter last week, Trump signaled his contempt for VOA’s journalism by brushing off a question from Widakuswara. When Widakuswara asked the visiting Irish premier, Micheál Martin: “What about the president’s plan to expel Palestinians out of Gaza? Are you discussing that with him and giving him your opinion?” Trump interrupted to say: “Nobody is expelling any Palestinians. Who are you with?” After Widakuswara answered: “I’m with Voice of America, sir.” Trump replied: “Oh, no wonder” and ended the exchange by calling on another reporter to ask a question more to his liking. “Authoritarian censorship regimes like the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party are loudly cheering for the death of Voice of America”, Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders USA said in a statement. “It’s clear that Donald Trump’s action will encourage harsher crackdowns against journalists and press freedom, putting VOA and RSF staff, correspondents, volunteers, and supporters in greater danger. RSF is compelled to act to protect VOA and the broader press freedom community”. “Voice of America was founded to spread the truth and fight propaganda from lawless authoritarian regimes—so it’s no surprise that the Trump administration is trying to dismantle it. This blatant political takeover isn’t just an attack on our members’ jobs—it’s an assault on press freedom, journalistic integrity, and democracy the world over”, said Everett Kelley, whose union represents VOA and Office of Cuba Broadcasting employees. VOA abruptly stopped published news reports last Saturday, when some of its journalists discovered that they had been locked out of the network’s offices in Washington. According to Nieman Lab, VOA’s 17 local-language WhatsApp channels sent their last updates on Saturday as well. Misha Komadovsky, another VOA White House correspondent, note that all of VOA’s satellite channels suddenly started running a promotional video that echoed the style of state telvision in authoritarian regimes, with on-screen text that read: “VOA will present the polices of the United States”. According to memo obtained by ABC News, the Trump administration cut off legal aid for 26,000 unaccompanied immigrant children on Friday. ABC reports that the interior department, which handles contracts for the office of refugee resettlement, informed organizations that collectively receive over $200m in federal grants to represent unaccompanied minors that the contract was partially terminated. Last month, the administration issued a stop-work order to the legal aid groups in February, before rescinding that order within 48 hours. Advocates say some of the children are just a few months old, and others are school-aged, including teenagers. Many are in exceedingly vulnerable situations and have been abused either in their home countries or in the US, or are minors who have been trafficked. Two California researchers said Friday that a US government health publication instructed them to remove data on sexual orientation from a scientific manuscript that had been accepted for publication, the Associated Press reports. The researchers also said they were told to remove the words “gender,” “cisgender” and “equitable” from their paper, which looked at smoking among rural young adults. The reason given for the changes was to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, researchers Tamar Antin and Rachelle Annechino said in a blog post where they included screenshots of the revisions. Instead of complying, the researchers withdrew their paper from Public Health Reports, the official journal of the US Surgeon General and US Public Health Service. A Cornell University PhD student earlier this month sued the Trump administration seeking to stop the president’s order aimed at foreign students accused of “antisemitism”. Days later, the Department of Homeland Security emailed to request that the student “surrender” to immigration officials. Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of the UK and Gambia, is one of three Cornell students who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to block the enforcement of Trump executive orders aimed at deporting foreign university students and staff involved in pro-Palestinian protest. “Only in a dictatorship can the leader jail and banish political opponents for criticizing his administration,” Taal, 31, wrote in a statement accompanying the lawsuit, which was submitted by lawyers at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), a civil rights group, on 16 March. Social media users are calling Columbia University “King’s College” as news breaks that the university has caved to Donald Trump’s political demands in hopes of reversing his federal funding cuts. “King’s College” is the wealthy Ivy League school’s original name, from its founding in 1754, during the reign of George II, when New York City was part of England’s North American colonies. The school was renamed “Columbia College” after the American Revolution. Giving it that name again is a way of criticizing both Trump and the university for what some people see as undemocratic behavior. Trump revokes legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans Donald Trump’s administration will revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States, according to a Federal Register notice on Friday, in the latest expansion of his crackdown on immigration. It will be effective on 24 April. The move cuts short a two-year “parole” granted to the immigrants under former president Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors. Crux of Columbia’s deal with Trump: new political oversight of Middle East scholars Many elements of a wealthy private university’s deal with Trump to restore its federal funding will receive new scrutiny in the days to come, but early reports suggest one concession is key: Columbia’s agreement, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “to appoint a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies as well as the Center for Palestine Studies”. “Faculty at Columbia and nationwide are expressing deep reservations about letting the federal government dictate how they can operate an academic department,” the WSJ notes. “The new vice-provost, appointed by Columbia, will review curriculum, nontenure faculty hiring and leadership ‘to ensure the educational offerings are comprehensive and balanced.’” Again, Columbia is not a government-run university. It is a private university, with a large private endowment. As Columbia University, a private institution with an endowment of roughly $15bn, announced it was giving in to Donald Trump’s political demands on how to treat students and the governance of an academic department, other Ivy League leaders took a different stance. The news about Columbia’s caving to the Trump administration’s demands has put a new spotlight on an essay from earlier this week by Princeton University’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, who calls on other universities to resist: … the government is using grants that apply to Columbia science departments as a cudgel to force changes to a completely unrelated department that the government apparently regards as objectionable. Nobody should suppose that this will stop at Columbia or with the specific academic programs targeted by the government’s letter. Precisely because great research universities are centers of independent, creative thought, they generate arguments and ideas that challenge political power across fields as varied as international relations, biology, economics, and history. If government officials think that stifling such criticism is politically acceptable and legally permissible, some people in authority will inevitably yield to the temptation to do so. … The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights. New York Times: Does the $400m of federal cuts at Columbia have special significance for Trump? The New York Times has highlighted a decades-old real estate dispute between Columbia University and Donald Trump, noting that dispute also hinged on $400m. Today, the newspaper reports: Some former university officials are quietly wondering whether the ultimately unsuccessful property transaction sowed the seeds of Mr Trump’s current focus on Columbia. His administration has demanded that the university turn over vast control of its policies and even curricular decisions in its effort to quell antisemitism on campus. It has also canceled federal grants and contracts at Columbia – valued at $400 million. The New York Times reports that the Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment on the story. Why didn’t Columbia University file a lawsuit to fight back against Trump? Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked why Columbia, one of the wealthiest private institutions in the US, had not filed a lawsuit to protect itself from the political demands Trump was making. Today, after Columbia announced it was giving in to several of the president’s demand, an unnamed Columbia University administrator offered several reasons for Columbia’s choice not to battle Trump in court, including that school leaders had some agreement with what Trump wanted, the Wall Street Journal reports: A Columbia senior administrator said the school considered legal options to challenge the Trump team but ultimately determined the federal government has so many available levers to claw back money, it would be a difficult fight. Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands. How US news organizations are characterizing Columbia’s deal with Trump: Wall Street Journal: Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding New York Post: Columbia caves to Trump’s demands after $400M threat over campus antisemitism, will institute mask ban and more oversight New York Times: Columbia Makes Concessions to Trump Amid Bid to Reclaim Federal Funds Axios: Columbia complies with Trump demands to regain $400 million in funding Columbia University has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump administration as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus, Reuters reports. More reactions to this news shortly, but first, what Reuters is reporting: Columbia acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty. The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has sanctioned as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives. Among the most contentious of the nine demands, Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty. The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent. Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in the department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The school has also hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said. The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to ‘ensure intellectual diversity.’ A few more key details from today’s deportation flights hearing As we noted earlier, judge James Boasberg spent some time in a hearing today criticizing the justice department’s conduct and rhetoric in the lawsuit over whether the Trump administration can use an 18th century wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelans to El Salvador. But the judge also took issue with the substance of their legal argument. During Friday’s hearing, Boasberg also said the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants carries “incredibly troublesome” policy ramifications, the Associated Press reported. “Why was this law essentially signed in the dark and these people essentially rushed on to planes?” Boasberg asked. “It seems to be that you only do that if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before lawsuits can be filed.” The judge pointed to the US supreme court’s finding that people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks were entitled to challenge whether they had any ties to al-Qaida. Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU, also said at the hearing that some people on the deportation flights from the US to El Salvador were returned from El Salvador after the government refused to take them, raising more questions about the speed of the deportations. A federal judge and the Trump administration have been engaged in a very active stalemate all week over whether Trump’s justice department violated the judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador under a legally contentious “wartime” law. To put it more bluntly, the issue is whether the Trump administration has to listen to what judges tell them to do and what consequences the administration will face if they simply decide they don’t have to. Trump and many of his supporters have called for the judge’s impeachment over his insistence that the Trump administration is bound by court orders; John Roberts, the chief justice of US supreme court, made a rare public statement to say that what Republicans were doing was not proper behavior. Here’s the latest from the AP: A federal judge examining the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around. Chief Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine if the administration ignored his turnaround order last weekend when at least two planeloads of immigrants were still in flight. “I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during a hearing Friday for a lawsuit challenging the deportations. Earlier Friday, the Justice Department informed the judge that top leaders in President Donald Trump’s administration are debating whether to invoke a “state secrets privilege” in response to the district judge’s questions about the deportation flights. The Republican administration has largely resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition. Boasberg dismissed its response as “woefully insufficient,” increasing the possibility that he may hold administration officials in contempt of court. Denmark and Finland urge caution for US-bound transgender people Denmark and Finland have updated their US travel advice for transgender people, joining the handful of European countries that have sought to caution US-bound travelers in recent weeks as reports emerge of ordeals at the American border, my colleague Ashifa Kassam, our European affairs correspondent, reports. Denmark said this week it had begun advising transgender travelers to contact the US embassy in Copenhagen before departure to ensure there would be no issues with travel documents. “If your passport has the gender designation X or you have changed gender, it is recommended to contact the US embassy prior to travel for guidance on how to proceed,” the Danish travel advisory page now reads. Good news for white collar criminals? Hundreds resigning at Wall Street’s top regulator Wall Street’s top regulator is facing a staff exodus across key departments as hundreds have agreed to take resignation offers amid Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to remake the US government, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Departures from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, including by senior staff and enforcement lawyers, could significantly hamper the watchdog’s efforts to police markets and protect investors, the sources said. The exits stem from Trump and Musk’s efforts to slash the federal workforce. Since the White House began offering voluntary departures across the civil service in January, more than 600 people have agreed to leave the SEC, said two sources with direct knowledge and two people briefed on the matter. Friday is the deadline for the SEC’s latest resignation incentive programs. US court will not pause ruling requiring Trump administration to reinstate 25,000 workers A US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring the administration of President Donald Trump to reinstate 25,000 workers at 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce, Reuters reports. The 18 agencies involved in the case include the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department. Most agencies have said that they fired a few hundred probationary workers, but others terminated far more. The treasury department fired about 7,600 people, the Department of Agriculture about 5,700 and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to court filings. The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reports, in a move that will undermine its ability to provide oversight as he implements hardline immigration policies. Here’s more on the significance of the office’s closure, from the Times: The more than 100 staff members were told they would be put on leave and formally fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. Mr. Trump also closed the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies. The moves were the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to root out civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms across government agencies. But the shuttering of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was particularly notable given the lack of transparency over the administration’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Trump has been determined in his second term to ensure that his administration is made of up of loyalists who will not try to block his agenda. Just this week, the Trump administration stonewalled a federal judge seeking information about the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants with little to no due process to a prison in El Salvador. “It’s a demonstration of their total contempt for any checks on their power,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former civil rights office worker and chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. She said the office “endeavored to make the D.H.S. mission work with respect for civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.” “This is a clear message that those things do not matter to this administration,” she added. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.” “These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.” Donald Trump’s purge of all DEI-related initiatives in the US government has had the knock-on effect of undercutting efforts to fight trafficking, the Guardian’s Katie McQue reports: The US government has ordered law enforcement agencies, the state department and some non-profit organizations working to combat sex trafficking to remove references to victims’ LGBTQ+ identities, race and immigration status from their communications and websites, a move experts warn will endanger vulnerable minors. Interviews with a prosecutor, government personnel, trafficking non-profit executives, as well as email correspondence reviewed by the Guardian show that agencies and organizations are complying with the orders to avoid losing federal funding. Experts in child safety say the policy is fostering a climate of fear, forcing organizations to acquiesce in order to retain crucial funding at the expense of helping victims. The directive stems from executive orders issued by Donald Trump targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and LGBTQ+ communities. Some non-profits receiving federal funding have been prohibited from using the terms “marginalized”, “vulnerable” and “immigrants” in correspondence from grant funders. Donald Trump signed the executive orders nixing DEI on 20 January, the day of the presidential inauguration. One order, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”, mandates the removal of policies, programs, and activities relating to “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”. Another, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” instructs the removal of all “radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms”. Politico reports that the federal judge weighing the legality of the Trump administration’s rapid deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act is criticizing the justice department’s conduct in the case. Recent filings from the government have used “the kind of intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States”, judge James Boasberg said at the hearing, which is ongoing. More about this ongoing legal battle, in which the Trump administration may have allowed planes carrying the migrants to proceed to El Salvador despite Boasberg’s order: We are now two months in to Donald Trump’s second term, but his predecessor Joe Biden reportedly continues to believe that he could still be in office right now, if only things had gone a little differently. “Biden has no pangs of regret, a person familiar with his private conversations said. He remains defiant and believes Trump’s victory shows the party did itself no favors by pushing him to drop out of the race, the source said,” NBC News reports today in a piece looking at Biden’s low-key life since exiting the White House on 20 January. It’s hard to prove a negative, but let’s briefly recount the facts of Biden’s botched re-election bid: his decision to embark on it in the first place, even though his approval ratings were poor, the months of campaigning that did little to change public opinion, his disastrous debate against Trump, the pressure campaign from his own allies that led him to quit and hand over to Kamala Harris, to no avail. Nonetheless, NBC reports that Joe and Jill Biden have offered their services to the Democratic party, should they need them: Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him. Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said. So far, Biden’s overture seems to have fallen flat. Democrats find themselves adrift, casting about for a compelling messenger. Whoever that is, it’s not Biden, many party activists and donors contend. He’s tethered to the 2024 defeat and, at 82, is a symbol more of the party’s past than its future, they argue. “Who’s going to want Joe Biden back in the game?” said a major Biden supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him. White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino has tweeted out a better photo of the F-47 fighter jet, which Donald Trump announced in the Oval Office earlier today: As defense secretary Pete Hegseth was leaving the White House, he encountered reporters who wanted to know if the jet’s numerical designation – 47 – had anything to do with Trump, who is the 47th president. Hegseth did not respond. A Minnesota veteran who found work at the Veterans Benefits Administration after suffering two traumatic brain injuries on overseas deployments stood in front of hundreds of people and five Democratic state attorneys general on Thursday night and recalled the moment she learned she lost her job. “All I was given was a Post-it note,” Joy Marver said, inspiring gasps and boos from a raucous crowd. “The Post-it note contained just the HR email address and my supervisor’s phone number. This came from an external source. Doge terminated me. No one in my chain of command knew I was being terminated. No one knew. It took two weeks to get my termination email sent to me.” The firing was so demoralizing she said she considered driving her truck off a bridge but instead went into the VA for crisis care. “Don’t fuck with a veteran,” she concluded. For the full story, click here: Elon Musk is offering voters money again – this time in Wisconsin, via an online “Petition in Opposition to Activist Judges”, concerning an election for the state supreme court. “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” reads the petition, launched by Musk’s America Pac, alluding to the Trump administration’s string of court reverses and resulting virulent attack on the independence of the federal courts. Those who sign the petition are told they will be “rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role –interpreting, not legislating”. Underneath that text, a “special offer for Wisconsin registered voters” says signees get $100. So does anyone who refers someone else who signs. Musk is not technically buying votes: the petition does not make any demand of who signees should vote for in the supreme court race or any other contest. Nor could it control any ballot cast in the privacy of the voting booth. But Musk does have form in offering voters money, a controversial thing to do at any time. Last October, as the presidential election neared its end, America Pac offered $1m a day to lucky petition signers, in what the Guardian said appeared to be “a way to incentivize Republicans in battleground states to register to vote”. Musk was sued over the scheme. The Wisconsin supreme court race is an interesting one, of course. As Politico put it this morning: In the final 10 days of the high-profile campaign, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is blanketing the TV airwaves with two new ads that put Musk front-and-center. The ads … part of a seven-figure investment in Musk-related ads and events, link the billionaire and his Department of Government Efficiency to Brad Schmiel, the state’s former GOP attorney general who’s now running for the seat.” Looking ahead, Politico adds: “It’s the first big test of an emerging attack line for Democrats in a swing state, and it’s playing out in the most expensive state Supreme Court race in US history, with the potential to swing the liberal-leaning court back to conservative. ‘Elon Musk is out of control, and now the power-hungry billionaire is unloading millions to buy the Wisconsin supreme court,’ the ad’s narrator says, citing the more than $7m a Musk-backed super pac has dropped on the race. ‘He knows corrupt politician Brad Schmiel is for sale and will abolish the checks and balances that protect us.’” Here’s more on the Wisconsin race, from the Guardian’s David Smith: A Republican US representative from Utah faced a town hall audience on Thursday night and made a rather surprising statement: the US will drift towards authoritarianism “if we don’t get the executive branch under control”. That earned Celeste Maloy applause – which turned to boos when she added: “When Biden was president, I had the same concern.” Democrats charge Donald Trump with authoritarian leanings and actions, particularly as he stokes a stand-off with federal judges who have ruled against him. Town halls have become treacherous territory for Republicans thanks to Trump’s brutal attacks on federal budgets and staffing, overseen by Elon Musk, Trump’s very evidently un-elected, and very evidently super-rich, donor, confidant and ally. ABC News reports that Malloy, a member of the House appropriations committee, faced a “boisterous audience in liberal Salt Lake City” with Mike Kennedy, another Utah Republican. They told their audience they opposed some Trump cuts, such as to the National Parks Service, but Malloy said: “We are not going to get out of the situation we’re in financially without all of us feeling some pain.” Kennedy prompted jeers when he defended Trump moves including eviscerating the US Agency for International Development. According to ABC, “Voters from both parties said after the town hall they had hoped to hear more about social security. Dozens of the program’s offices across the country are slated to close due to actions taken by Elon Musk’s [so-called] ‘department of government efficiency’”, or Doge. Musk’s unsubstantiated claims of massive social security fraud – and his apparent desire to cut the benefits program – are proving damaging for Republicans. Addressing her own town hall this week, the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski – no stranger to crossing Trump – said: “It doesn’t help the president when you have somebody who clearly is not worried about whether or not social security benefits are going to be there for him” working on social security reform. “It worries Americans all over the country. This is why social security has been kind of viewed as the untouchable from a political perspective.” Elon Musk visited the Pentagon this morning amid multiple reports that military officials would share with him their confidential plan for war with China. A little bit later in the Oval Office, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth took questions after announcing a “state of the art” fighter jet program, where the defense secretary denied that Musk had been shown the plan, or that such a disclosure was ever being considered. The president, meanwhile, outlined how functions handled by the Department of Education would be moved to other agencies now that he has ordered it closed, and also said there would be “flexibility” in his new tariff regimen. Here’s what else has happened today so far: Trump professed his love for King Charles and said he would be open to a reported offer that the United States join the Commonwealth. Responding to reports that some of the suspected Venezuelan gang members deported to El Salvador last weekend were not in any gang, Trump said investigators would look into that, while defending his hardline immigration policies. John F Kennedy’s assassination came up in Trump’s encounter with the press, when a reporter asked him who killed the former president. Trump did not say, instead explaining why he allowed documents to be released with Social Security numbers and other identifying details included. Meanwhile, a Venezuelan government minister denied that any of the more than 200 migrants the Trump administration deported to El Salvador last weekend weekend were members of the gang Tren de Aragua, Reuters reports. Donald Trump and the justice department have insisted the migrants were members of the group, and therefore eligible for swift deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. From Reuters, here’s what Venezuela’s government thinks of that: Venezuelan’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on Friday that no one among the hundreds of deportees to a Salvadoran prison, whom Washington accused of being members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, were related to the criminal organization. Cabello cited a list of names disclosed in U.S. and from one of his own sources, speaking in a podcast shared on his Telegram channel. U.S. President Donald Trump had on Saturday invoked an obscure wartime law to rapidly deport people who were, according to the White House, members of the Venezuelan gang which Washington has declared a terrorist group and alien enemy. Despite a judge quickly blocking the measure, Trump’s administration deported 137 Venezuelans to El Salvador where they were detained in the country’s massive anti-terrorism prison, for a period of a year subject to renewal. Meanwhile, families and lawyers have been seeking answers about relatives and clients whom they could no longer reach, and demanding their return to Venezuela. “I believe with absolute responsibility that not a single one (of the names on the list) appears on the organizational chart of the now-extinct Tren de Aragua organization, not a single one,” Cabello said. Venezuela says Tren de Aragua was effectively wiped out after a series of raids in 2023, and that the idea that it still exists is based on a claim from the country’s political opposition. “It is a lie, a massive lie, and we have the means to prove it,” he added. “Now if the United States refuses to recognize this reality, that’s their prerogative.” Donald Trump has talked up the new tariffs he has promised to impose on countries worldwide on 2 April, so much so that he’s taking to calling the date “Liberation Day”. On that date, the president has ordered the United States to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners around the world, which will be equal to whatever levies they place on US goods. Exemptions from 25% tariffs that he has given Canada and Mexico will also end on that day. It will likely amount to a a major reordering of the United State’s relations with its trading partners, and have major implications for the US economy. Yet for all his talk of tariffs, Trump has indicated that he may change his mind. The latest came just now in the Oval Office, where he said there will be “flexibility” with the new tariffs. “People are coming to me and talking about tariffs, and a lot of people are asking me if they could have exceptions. And once you do that for one, you have to do that for all,” Trump said. “The word flexibility is an important word. Sometimes there’s flexibility, so there’ll be flexibility.” Trump has moved on, and is now, once again, talking about making Canada the 51st state. But a reporter wanted to know if he was worried that Canada would be a blue state, if it was somehow admitted to the union. The president demurred: I don’t know about that. I think Canada is a place, like a lot of other places, if you have a good candidate, the candidate’s gonna win. Donald Trump, who is continuing to take questions in the Oval Office with Pete Hegseth by his side, said he would not have allowed the military’s plan for a potential war with China to be shared with Elon Musk or anyone like him. “I don’t want other people seeing, anybody seeing potential war with China. We don’t want to have a potential war with China, but I can tell you, if we did, we’re very well equipped to handle it,” Trump said. The possibility that Musk could see the plan raised alarms, as he has business interests in China. Trump said he was aware of that: You know, Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that, but it was such a fake story. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said that Elon Musk was not shown the Pentagon’s plan for a potential war with China during the Tesla CEO’s visit earlier today. “Elon Musk is a patriot. Elon Musk is an innovator. Elon Musk provides a lot of capabilities our government and our military rely on, and I’m grateful for that,” said Hegseth, who added that reports Musk would be shown the plan were meant to “undermine whatever relationship the Pentagon has with” him. “We welcomed him today to the Pentagon to talk about [the department of government efficiency], to talk about efficiencies, to talk about innovations. It was a great informal conversation. The rest of that reporting was fake. There was no war plans. There was no Chinese war plans. There was no secret plans. That’s not what we were doing the Pentagon.” The Trump administration carried out the high-profile deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend, which may have violated a judge’s order. The deportees were sent to El Salvador, but since they arrived, their family members have offered evidence that they were not members of Tren de Aragua, the gang whose members Trump has targeted for rapid deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. Asked about the possibility some of the deportees were not gang members, Trump said: I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process, and that will also be continuing in El Salvador, and if there’s anything like that, we would certainly want to find out. But … these were a bad group. This was a bad group, and they were in bad areas, and they were with a lot of other people that were absolutely killers, murderers, and people that were really bad, with the worst records you’ve ever seen. Much of the Trump administration’s case against the deportees seems to center on their tattoos: Donald Trump is now taking questions from reporters in the room, and the first was a blunt ask for the president to “tell us who killed Kennedy”. Earlier in the week, Trump released 80,000 pages of government documents related to the assassination of John F Kennedy. Trump did not answer the question of who killed Kennedy, instead saying of the documents: “I don’t think there’s anything that’s earth shattering, but you’ll have to make that determination.” He also weighed in on why he allowed social security numbers and other identifying details to be revealed in the Kennedy documents, saying “I didn’t want anything deleted.” Trump added that he would release government documents concerning the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Donald Trump is delivering his speech from the Oval Office, seated at his desk next to what appears to be an image of the F-47 fighter jet. It’s a little hard to make it out, though. Donald Trump has now shifted to defense, unveiling the F-47 fighter jet program, which he promises will deliver a “state of the art” stealth jet. “The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built. An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation,” Trump said. “The F-47 is equipped with state-of-the-art stealth technology. It’s virtually unseeable and unprecedented power, the most power of any jet of its kind ever made.” Its designation may be an homage to Trump, who is the 47th president. Donald Trump is speaking now in the Oval Office with defense secretary Pete Hegseth by his side, but began by elaborating on how he will implement his executive order yesterday ordering the dismantling of the Department of Education. “I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” Trump said. “We have a portfolio that’s very large, lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans, pretty complicated deal, and that’s coming out of the Department of Education immediately.” He added that the Department of Health and Human Services “will be handling special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else.” Donald Trump spent much of this week touting his efforts to secure a ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. But as the Guardian’s Andrew Roth reports, what Trump says and what his negotiating partners understand are often two different things: Donald Trump’s shuttle diplomacy between Russia and Ukraine has at times resembled a game of broken telephone, and the US president’s disregard for the details suggests the ceasefire he seeks is further off than his bullish statements may suggest. Consider the events of just the last week. After his call with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, Trump said that the two men had agreed to a partial ceasefire on “energy and infrastructure” targets, indicating that Russia would not target bridges, hospitals, railways or other civilian structures. Hours later, a Russian drone slammed into a Ukrainian hospital. Russia’s readout of the call said that it had agreed to a halt on strikes on “energy infrastructure”, suggesting that everything else was fair game. By Wednesday, the White House press secretary was dodging the question of what was discussed, pointing reporters to the administration’s readout without clarifying if Trump had misunderstood their discussion. That day, Trump surprised the world by announcing that the US was proposing an American-led privatisation of Ukrainian power plants in order to provide a new security guarantee to the Ukrainians. Trump ordered his national security adviser Mike Waltz and secretary of state Marco Rubio to provide an “accurate” readout of the call (in itself a curious distinction). In it, they said Trump had told Zelenskyy that “American ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure.” Not so fast, said Zelenskyy on Thursday. The power plants are national property and “belong to all Ukrainians”. A takeover bid had never come up. Reporters at the Pentagon have spotted Elon Musk leaving, after what the New York Times reports was an 80-minute meeting with defense secretary Pete Hegseth. It is unclear if Musk, who leads Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency initiative and has business interests in China, was briefed on the military’s plan for a potential war with Beijing. But the Times reports that Musk’s meeting with Hegseth did not take place in a secure Pentagon conference room where it was originally scheduled to take place. Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth are scheduled to at 11am deliver a joint address from the Oval Office, but the White House did not say what it will concern. The Wall Street Journal seems to have uncovered the answer: they will announce a new fighter jet program. The new jet will be the most expensive in history, and operate alongside drones, according to the Journal, which adds the plane is geared towards fending off China’s air force in the event of a war. Here’s more, from the Journal: The piloted planes are to be fielded in the 2030s and would fight alongside semiautonomous drones, as the Pentagon seeks to gain a technological edge over U.S. adversaries. The future of the program had been in doubt after the Biden administration opted to leave the final decision on how to proceed to the incoming Trump administration. Elon Musk, the billionaire and Trump ally, has publicly campaigned against manned aircraft, which he said were “obsolete in the age of drones.” Musk arrived at the Pentagon Friday morning for sensitive discussions about China. Air Force officials have argued that piloted planes are still vital for fighting the wars of the future, especially if they incorporate cutting-edge designs, sophisticated sensors, more powerful engines and control the semiautonomous drones that operate with them. … Fielding the plane will be expensive, as the new fighters could cost as much as several hundred million dollars each. The Air Force’s current Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters cost about $80 million. The F-35, which has been a Musk target, is a multi-role plane that is designed mainly for air-to-ground combat. The new fighter has been described as an air-to-air fighter that would replace the F-22 and would be able to fly in heavily defended environments. Donald Trump is so excited about the reciprocal tariffs he plans to impose on 2 April that he has taken to calling it “Liberation Day”. As he did in a Truth Social post this morning: April 2nd is Liberation Day in America!!! For DECADES we have been ripped off and abused by every nation in the World, both friend and foe. Now it is finally time for the Good Ol’ USA to get some of that MONEY, and RESPECT, BACK. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! But a recent poll conducted for the Guardian shows that Americans are generally freaked out by the prospect of the United States imposing tariffs on countries worldwide, including a hefty share of Republicans: Donald Trump is partaking in some royal intrigue with a social media post declaring his love for Britain’s King Charles and saying he would welcome a reported “secret offer” billed as easing tensions with Canada. On Truth Social, the president linked to a story in UK tabloid the Sun, which says: KING Charles will reportedly make a “secret offer” to Donald Trump during his State visit. The Royal proposal is said to potentially reduce tensions between the White House and Canada. Plans are allegedly in the works to make the USA the next “associate member” of the Commonwealth. The international association, which currently boasts 56 states, could welcome the US as a new member. In February, a Tariff war began between the two countries with Trump signing orders to impose near-universal tariffs on goods from Canada entering the United States. The US President revealed Canada could avoid higher taxes if it joined the United States of America as its 51 state. Canada, of which the King is head of state, is part of the Commonwealth of Nations and including America may dampen the current conflict. To which Trump responded: I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me! But trade tensions with Canada are likely to grow worse on 2 April, when an exemption from 25% tariffs he imposed on the country expires. Journalists at the Pentagon have spotted Elon Musk arriving for a visit where he will reportedly be briefed on the military’s plan for a potential war with China. Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth have both denied the reports that details of the military’s strategy against China will be shared with Musk. The US government appears to have complied with a federal judge’s request for a high-level official to confirm that it is considering invoking a nation security exemption to avoid sharing details of migrant deportation flights that may have violated a court order. Justice department attorneys have been in a legal standoff with James Boasberg, a federal judge who over the weekend told the Trump administration not to allow three planes carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members to fly to El Salvador. The planes arrived anyway, and Boasberg has since been demanding details of the aircrafts’ itineraries to determine if his order was violated. The justice department has said the Trump administration may determine the information is a “state secret” that it cannot reveal to the judge. Yesterday, Boasberg demanded that the administration have “a person with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” submit a declaration. That declaration has now arrived, from Todd Blanche, a deputy attorney general, who confirmed his “direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.” The government now has until next Tuesday to decide whether to invoke the privilege. Here’s more on the back-and-forth between the judge and the Trump administration: In Tempe on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez praised Arizona voters for electing two Democratic senators. She then swiped at the state’s former one-term senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic party to become an independent while in office and declined to seek re-election. “One thing I love about Arizonans is that you all have shown that if a US Senator isn’t fighting hard enough for you, you’re not afraid to replace her with one who will,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Sinema recently resurfaced old comments by Ocasio-Cortez attacking the then-senator over her refusal to abolish the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation. Last week, House Democrats implored their Senate counterparts to use the filibuster to block a Republican-drafted funding bill. “Change of heart on the filibuster I see!” Sinema posted. “Still no. In fact, the same Dems who argue to keep the filibuster ‘for when we need it’ do not, in fact, use it when we need it,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back. At their rally in Arizona, senator Bernie Sanders and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered a sharp critique of the Democrats. “This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too,” Ocasio-Cortez said, drawing some of the loudest, most sustained applause of the event. Several rallygoers said they would like to see Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat of New York, challenge the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer in a primary race after he relented and helped Republicans pass a funding bill last week to avert a shutdown. Ocasio-Cortez made no explicit mention of Schumer or her future political ambitions, despite intermittent shouts of “Primary Chuck”. She called on attendees to help elect candidates “with the courage to brawl for the working class”. Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth are scheduled to make a joint speech from the Oval Office at 11am ET. The White House did not say what it would concern, but Hegseth tweeted last night that the president is “leading the way on the future of American power.” Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has joined his boss Donald Trump in denying that Elon Musk will be allowed to see the US military’s secret plan for a potential war with China when he visits the Pentagon today. On X, Hegseth acknowledged Musk’s visit but said the war plans would not be discussed: We look forward to welcoming @elonmusk to the Pentagon tomorrow. But the fake news delivers again — this is NOT a meeting about “top secret China war plans.” It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great! Trump posted about the matter not once, but twice on Truth Social. Last night, he wrote: How ridiculous?” China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!! The president issued a denial again this morning in which he attacked a reporter and two outlets that reported the story, while saying: “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The department of war has not existed since 1947. Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, delivered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, accusing them of “screwing over” working and middle class Americans as they turn the country into an oligarchy. Speaking to an overflow crowd of thousands as part of his Stop Oligarchy tour, Sanders warned the president: “We will not allow you to move this country into an oligarchy. We’re not going to allow you and your friend Mr Musk and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on this country.” Ocasio-Cortez put it differently: “We’re going to throw these bums out and fight for the nation we deserve.” Sanders trained some of his sharpest attacks on industry titans. “You know who the biggest criminals are in this country? They are the CEOs of major corporations who are robbing us every single day,” he said. “They are the fossil fuel industry that has lied to us for years about what they’re doing to the planet. It is the drug companies who charge us the highest prices in the world and people die because they can’t afford those drugs. It’s the insurance companies who deny claim after claim. Those are major criminals.” Earlier on Thursday, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez held another rally in Las Vegas. The tour continues on Friday, with events in Colorado, including a town hall in Denver featuring Alvaro Bedoya, an Federal Trade Commission member who was abruptly fired by Trump this week. On Saturday, the pair will return to Arizona for a rally in Tucson. Donald Trump has denied a New York Times report that his close ally, billionaire Elon Musk, was due to be briefed by the Pentagon on Friday about the US military’s plan for any war that might break out with China. “China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump said in a post about the Pentagon meeting on Truth Social on Thursday. The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said in a post on X that the meeting would be “about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production”. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the briefing for Musk would be attended by senior US military officials in the Pentagon and would be an overview on a number of different topics, including China. According to the New York Times report, the briefing would include 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight in a conflict with China. The newspaper cited two US officials it did not identify. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said late Thursday that he would be meeting with billionaire Elon Musk at the Pentagon Friday to discuss “innovation, efficiencies & smarter production”. Musk, a top adviser to Donald Trump, and his “department of government efficiency” have played an integral role in the administration’s push to dramatically reduce the size of the government. Musk has faced intense blowback from some lawmakers and voters for his chainsaw-wielding approach to laying off workers and slashing programs, although Trump’s supporters have hailed it. A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the defense department. In a post on Musk’s X platform, Hegseth emphasized that “this is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans’”, denying a story published by the New York Times late Thursday. Hegseth is also scheduled to deliver remarks with Trump at the White House Friday morning. A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches. James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt. Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition. Donald Trump rescinded an executive order targeting a prominent Democratic-leaning law firm after it agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals. The White House has targeted law firms whose lawyers have provided legal work that Trump disagrees with. Last week, he issued an order threatening to suspend active security clearances of attorneys at Paul, Weiss and to terminate any federal contracts the firm has. But the president suddenly reversed course following a meeting between Trump and Brad Karp, the chair of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, over the White House order. Trump’s order singled out the work of Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked at the firm and who oversaw an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances before Trump became president. Pomerantz once likened the president to a mob boss. Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news on this Friday morning. We begin with the news that Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the education department, an agency Republicans have talked about closing for decades. The order says the education secretary, Linda McMahon, will “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities”. Eliminating the department altogether would be a cumbersome task, which probably would require an act of Congress, AP reported. In the weeks since he took office, the Trump administration already has cut the department’s staff in half and overhauled much of the department’s work. Trump adviser Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress. The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Department of Education also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from t